I don't have a thesis, I have a research question

I am bored of my dissertation. So, so bored. I have been working on it every day since the Founding Fathers created the world and I will keep working on it every day until Ghost Abe Lincoln comes back to destroy us all. I get excited about it every once in a while when I try to describe it at a party or something (I'm so much fun at a party!) but then the next day I sit down in front of it all and am bored again.


It's not a feature, it's a bug.
There are several aspects of the productivity-type software suite* that I am using for said dissertation which make me angry. First, in Numbers, there's no text-to-columns feature. I really need to do text-to-columns, basically five times every day. I gave up completely and switched to a separate open-source spreadsheet editor instead because this makes me so furious.

Second, you can only alphabetize things in Pages if the things are in a table. I don't want it in a table, it's my bibliography! Let me sort the lines, you stupid program! I use some sort of nerdy add-on download thing instead, but what a rip-off. What kind of word processor can't sort alphabetically? A stupid one, that's what.

Third, the ways that you are allowed to specify where figures go, in relation to each other and to text, do not please nor satisfy me. Plus I think there is some sort of fault in either my computer or my edition of the software, so that half the time when I check a box, it checks or unchecks itself repeatedly in defiance of my wishes.

Far from becoming accustomed to these inconveniences, I find my anger grows each time I encounter any of them. I would switch to something else if they weren't all just as bad or worse. Woe, woe is me.

*not the big main evil one, the secondary next-most evil one with the irritating capitalization in its name. I was using LaTeX (which also has irritating capitalization but is otherwise much nicer) for a while, but the rules and regulations and personal preferences of my Dissertation Reviewing Institution are such that this was unworkable in the long run. I will switch back as soon as I see Ghost Abe Lincoln swimming up the burning Potomac and I know my dissertation is over, for sure.


It's not funny, it's dangerous
I moved everything into storage (or into the back of my truck). Step One: Accomplished. Also I injured myself innumerable times due to heat and fatigue and clumsiness and spite (the spite being on the part of various corners and edges, not me). Fletcher, while discussing the differences and similarities between our physical appearances, remarked that "we both got yellow hair and we both got lots of booboos". Indeed we do.

Then I hit the open road! Or if not exactly that, then at least I hit the slow-moving very full road to Arlington where I stayed last week, before getting back on the same not-so-open road to come crawling back to Constitution City.

Now I'm back to the District, which is such a relief because it made me very anxious to spend so much time in an actual State. What if someone expected me to vote about something? How would Ghost Abe Lincoln know where to find me if the end of the world were at hand?


This ain't no party, this ain't no disco
Which it probably is. All things considered, the signs have been pointing more and more firmly towards Apocalypse for at least the last several thousand years. The sooner the better, I say. I'm tired of writing this dissertation.

Mutatis Mutandis

It's not the worst weekend to be moving, but it's less pleasant than if it were October. Or Montana.

Now up: Dissertation. On deck: The West.

Breizh

The workshop was very good. The presentations and discussions were interesting and the interpreters were excellent and there was plenty of coffee and eating delicious food in French restaurants.

There were lots of interesting different languages being used at the workshop. There were many different native-spoken-languages (English, German, French, Turkish, Italian, Dutch, and maybe others?) and many different signed languages (LSF, BSL, NGT, LIS, DGS, TİD). TİD wins for having the most fascinating alphabet to try to learn (I can't find any good videos, but it has exciting ways to do diacritics). There have also been all kinds of interesting linguistic things to notice related to what signs and menus say around here: Brittany (French Bretagne, Breton Breizh) has lots of Breton (Breton Brezhoneg) going on.

Now it's over and everyone else left to go back to all their homes in various places. Everyone (including Kyle, who flitted off to California) except me: I'm sitting around Kyle's apartment in Vannes drinking coffee and slowly moving towards maybe doing some work. It is very nice, and I plan to keep doing it for two more days. Then, Tuesday/Wednesday: back to the terrible heat swamp of Constitution City, and the terrible tribulation of having to do productive things all the time.

Foux du fa fa

I'm going to France to do linguistics and drink wine with Kyle. Je voudrais un croissant. Où est la piscine? Splish splash! La discothèque, c'est ici, bébé.

Au revoir.

Coming soon:

A hilarious treat for certain people.


(click to embiggen)

cf

postparty depression

I got back from a college-reunion-type trip to Portland Oregon yesterday. This reunion was hard work! And a lot of fun. There was mostly dancing and drinking and a carnival and old friends and new friends and relatives, and not very much sitting in front of a computer. I slept for 13 hours last night. Now I feel pretty much the way I did when I was 14 and had just returned home from bagpipe camp, all forlorn and nostalgic about the past week and disgruntled about having to start writing my dissertation again. Stupid dissertation.

I love wikipedia.

Hoaxilus poaxilus
Ivan T. Sanderson
lived in New Jersey, a
Scottish expat

Eminent father of
cryptozoology
known for surviving a
Really Big Bat

more double dactyls:
Goldilocks
Tom Swifty
Dog

I still exist

Here's a little something just for you. To tide you over until I finish my dissertation, or give up on it, or think of something funny to say:

Bittily brattily
Goldilocks, Goldilocks
What have you done with the
porridge and chairs?

Some stories make you a
defenestrationist;
others end sadly: you're
eaten by bears.

I'm a charmer is why

If papers, handouts, etc have a blank side, I put them in a drawer to use for scratch paper later. Here's what was on the "blank" side of the piece of paper I just pulled out:



Based on the other side of the paper, this is from a class about language politics and planning in 2006. I have no idea what the other relevant details were that led to this being drawn.

It's much harder to draw lots of hilarious cartoons during a class now that I am usually teaching the class.

Other in-class cartoons from my more-prototypically-studential days were about theta roles, morphology, and the extremely irritating and frustratingly common belief that gorillas can learn ASL*. I still haven't gotten around to the one about Phonology + Chrononhotonthologos = Phonolohotonthologos. Yet.

*Those last two, while they began in a classroom setting, involved substantial extracurricular efforts as well.

Oh, hello

I gotta make this quick because I'm under strict instructions from my advisor not to get distracted from working on my dissertation. He had a whole list of things I wasn't supposed to get distracted by, and I think "the internet" was on it, but I wasn't really paying attention because there was something pretty outside the window.

Speaking of writing my dissertation, hey, remember that time I was in college and I was writing my senior thesis and I accidentally listened to so much Bruce Springsteen while I was in my thesis office that I accidentally trained myself to ONLY be able to write my thesis if there was Bruce Springsteen in the background?

Seriously. It started with a 1-week period where I was all "ooh this live album is great! I'll listen to it over and over on giant headphones for a while!" And then I think it was habit, or I didn't have any other CDs in my office, or something. Anyway I kept listening to it for a few more days while I worked.

And then I got bored of Bruce Springsteen so I started listening to something else, but my brain had been Pavlov's-dog-'d into not being able to write my thesis to any soundtrack other than the Boss. I tried, and every time I tried, I didn't get anything accomplished. When I switched back to Live 1975-1985 (Disc 1) I would churn out lots of pages of beautiful ideas about Hildegard von Bingen and her sources of authority.

Man, by the end of that spring, I HATED Bruce Springsteen and his stupid E Street Band. I did graduate though.*

The point of this story is that I might have accidentally trained my brain again to demand only old school Billy Joel. Specifically, mainly, "The Longest Time" and "You May Be Right". I'm trying to branch out but it's hard work, and I'm worried that fooling around with my background music might count as being distracted.

Another thing that might count as being distracted is all the daydreaming/internet browsing I am doing about Bluetooth hearing aids. They are so shiny! If only I had $4,000. You know how I could get $4,000? If I had a real job. You know how I could get a real job? If I finished my stupid dissertation. So, back to that. See you around!



*My thesis advisor also mentioned to me, at one point, that I should try not to "get distracted by shiny things". I don't know why everyone thinks I'm so flaky, I totally know how to finish

My state is prettier than your state

While I was in Montana I drove to Billings. It was a very nice drive. Now I am back in the good old District of Constitution, daydreaming about mountains and open roads.

I been to wild Montana

I'm in Missoula. It took me 25 hours to get here, counting from when I left my house yesterday. That wasn't very fun, and now I'm kind of sick, but I'm sitting on the couch amidst many parents, siblings, and hangers-on, and somebody is probably going to build me a fire and bring me a beer any minute now so overall I'd say things turned out okay.

Petty complaints dept.

1. My downstairs, where I hang out with my friends, is very freezing. My upstairs, where I sleep, is very hot. This is the opposite of how I would prefer things to be.


2. My printer ran out of paper halfway through so I went to school, where one printer is busted and the other printer is very low on ink and neither printer prints color. My final printed product was unevenly inked and colored, which displeases me.


3. Then the post office was closed so I had to drive to a different post office and people in traffic did things of which I did not approve.


4. Now I feel like I'm done doing things. I have accomplished enough. Sadly, there are still things left that other people are expecting me to do.


5. I think I'm getting a sinus infection, and I have to get on bunch of planes on Thursday. Two thumbs down, Sinuses.


6. This list of complaints is way more "whiny and annoying" than "funny" or "provoking others to large amounts of sympathy and/or gifts", so I'm probably not even going to get anything out of it.

Whatever. I am almost done with the semester. Almost. See you soon, internet.

Q &/or A

A linguistics professor won a bunch of money on a game show. CBC News wrote this sentence about it:

Kennedy, a linguistics professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, won $17,700, capping his win by correctly answering "What is a Quarter Horse?" to the question "This American breed was named for its ability to race a distance of 1,320 feet" in the horse breeds category.

The question has become the answer, and the answer, the question. It's like that saying about chickens and eggs, sort of. Or like that other thing where you say "this sentence is false" and then everyone is so confused. Because what is a question, really? Or an answer? We may never know.

Alex Trebek, what have you done?

Toponyms

I was reading the news (instead of writing my dissertation or grading tests or applying for jobs or cleaning my room or doing the dishes or any of the other things I'm supposed to be getting done) and noticed this sentence that President Obama apparently said:

"She is a hero of mine and a source of inspiration for all who work to advance basic human rights in Burma and around the world"

The title of the article calls the country in question "Myanmar", and the article is at Al Jazeera, who I usually assume are on the leftest side of naming conventions. I remembered having at least one conversation with someone who knew about the difference between calling this country Burma and calling it Myanmar, but I did not remember the content of the conversation so I looked it up on Wikipedia. It is very interesting!

The two names are different-register variants of the same Burmese word (according to Wikipedia). Phonetic register variation: interesting.

Obama used the opposition version (according to Wikipedia) while stodgy old Al Jazeera English used the oppressive regime name (according to Wikipedia). Political implications/subtext: interesting.